Asus shows off its ION board

Asus has been showing off its ION-based C2N7A-I ITX motherboard, and we’ve come across some conflicting information. ION platforms have Atom CPUs, of course, and without them they’re just plain MCP79 or Geforce 9400 chipsets, and it would seem unlikely that Asus would call its board ION if it wasn't one.

Unfortunately, the cooling solution suggests there’s no Atom in this combination and we’ve heard that this board will actually run Celeron 220, which would automatically cancel out ION branding. However, this might be just plain speculation, as Nvidia wouldn't allow for ION branding on a non-Atom platform.

If this is indeed the case, and it wouldn’t be half bad as the Celeron 220 would kick Atom’s behind from here to Taipei (a lot of flight time, trust us sub.ed.), this means that Asus has been sneaking in for some of Nvidia’s press time.

Here’s a couple of shots of the board, but we'll look further into this: